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Hello! So I was recently very very lucky to have gained a maintenance apprenticeship with a water company. I have no previous experience in any form of engineering or even DIY!!! It must have been my "go get 'em" attitude and dazzling personality (haha)

Anyways, my job is part of a pump workshop, where pumps from within the company are sent, and we are required to fix them. I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far, but I keep beating myself up about a few things.

A month or two ago a small job came on and I was asked if I wanted to have a go at doing it on my own. I tested it, drained it, stripped it and got as far as I could no problems, then we had to order new parts which can take some time. A month later it came to putting the thing back together, and with some help from my mentor I got it done. Tested it and it all worked fine (woo hoo!) problem was we found a part on the floor that I had forgotten to put back in. I was told it wasn't an essential part of the pump and it would still work just fine without it. But I cant help but be a bit annoyed at myself for leaving it out. (It would have taken several hours if not a day or two to take the pump apart and build it again with the part in)

So my question is...Does anyone have any advice on how to keep track of parts? Is writing it down step by step as I take them apart the best way of keeping track? It can be quite hard to keep a piece of paper clean in the workshop, and taking a glove on and off can be a chore.

Welcome.
id probably make up a tray (plywood or similar) divided into different compartments. drop each part in and then label the box with a description of where it came from. If you have an exploded diagram available, you could reference it to that as well.
Use and label the bits in logical order in which they were stripped off. Outer bolts, cover screws, inner screws etc etc.

Good luck.

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----------------------------------------Lack of planning on your part doesn't make it an emergency on mine....

just tray them in order but we all have done it, count your self lucky once i come out of my time myself and another trades man had an apprentice on some 415v deck sockets for cranes, we had isolated and locked off... went for dinner and came back, before we had chance to even test the socket again as we had went away and came back, the apprentice was straight on there with his 15mm socket and ratchet releasing the terminals, had to go through the process with him why it was a bad idea!